Holy shit.
“The ancient Egyptians knew how to build,” Hassani said, appearing pleased by my reaction as he helped me back to my feet. And kept a hand on my arm to steady me, which I actually appreciated since I probably would have fallen again otherwise. I still might, I thought dizzily, staring up and then around at a long, octagonal chamber that could have fit three or four football fields. And their stands. And parts of their parking lots.
The damned thing was immense.
The ceiling soared out of sight, claimed by darkness despite the fact that each of the dozens of huge stone pillars supporting it had lights branching off of them. The massive torches were at least ten feet tall, but they looked tiny in comparison to everything else, and were woefully inadequate. And, damn it, I wanted to see this.
I fumbled in my jacket and came up with a small, golden bird that looked a lot like the spider I’d thrown at Hassani, which was probably why he eyed it apprehensively.
But this one was for me.
I tapped it against my temple, and the magical tat dissolved into my skin, leaving not so much as a raised outline under my fingertips. Had I had a mirror, I would have seen a faint blue outline of a hawk next to my right eye. And I would have seen every tiny feather of it, because my vision had just gone high-def.
But the help came at a price, namely a hit to my reputation. Vampires didn’t need magical tats, which were mostly designed to improve areas they already had covered: sharper senses, greater speed and boosted strength. As a result, they tended to be viewed, at least by mainstream vamp society, as another example of human inferiority—needing magic just to compete with a bargain basement vamp.
I expected, at the very least, to get a sneer or two.
But I was surprised.
“Ah.” Hassani nodded gravely. “It is good that you know of such things.”
“What?” I touched the bird self-consciously. “Why?”
“I will explain later. But for now,” he stepped forward, and threw out his arms in a gesture that would have been overly dramatic anywhere else, but here just seemed to fit. “Welcome to the House of Ra-Horakhty, the greatest temple in a city of temples, and the only one to survive intact from ancient times!”
The words echoed impressively around the huge hall, then slowly faded into silence. Hassani waited another moment, then looked back at me expectantly. This was one of those times that I could have really used Louis-Cesare, who always seemed to have some flowery French compliment to fit the occasion.
I, on the other hand, was speechless. It was like something out of an Indiana Jones movie, only with a better budget. Way better.
I just stood there, staring around like an idiot. Unlike Lantern Boy, who put down his burden and began furiously to clap. Hassani shot him a dark look and he stopped.
We eventually moved forward, the consul apparently realizing that I needed some time to take all this in.
He was right.
The sheer size of the place was breathtaking, but what it contained was even more so. There must have been a charm active in here, after all, or else an army of painters had been doing touch ups, because the faint images on the antechamber walls were nowhere to be found. Instead, dazzling murals many stories high blazed with color and hints of gold on both sides of the elongated body of the great, octagonal room, showing a panoply of ancient Egyptian gods.
Closest was Taweret, the somewhat comical looking hippo-croc goddess, with her strange head and very pregnant belly, who protected women in childbirth. The murals were done in bas-relief, with the paintings protruding from the background slightly, and embossed with different types of semiprecious stones. In Taweret’s case, her crocodile-like snout gleamed with what appeared to be malachite, the dark veins in the rock convincingly replicating scales.
Next in line was ibis-headed Thoth, the scribe of the gods, with a scroll clutched tightly in one jeweled hand. More jewels gleamed from his golden armbands and from the matching belt he wore, and glittered on the collar of the small baboon perched on his shoulder. The hair of his companion was made out of what appeared to be thousands of long, thin flakes of carnelian.
Anubis was next, looking frighteningly like the creatures we’d fought last night, with the sleek black head gleaming in the firelight. The eyes looked like two huge yellow diamonds, although I assumed that they were actually some sort of quartz as each was as big as my head. They reflected the flames of the torches, giving them an ominous, life-like quality.
Of course, that was true of all the gods, a seemingly endless procession on either side of the room, leading up to a long set of rock cut stairs at the far end. A throne sat at the top, with its gilt wood looking as fresh as if it had just been completed. And although it was empty, behind it was the biggest mural of them all, towering what had to be six stories high.
“Ra-Horakhty,” I guessed, as we started the long approach.
“Indeed.” Hassani’s voice was quiet now, as mine had been. It was that sort of place. I could easily imagine it awing the hell out of some ancient worshippers.
It was doing a pretty good job on me.
“Ra was the original sun god,” Hassani explained, “usually identified as the noon day sun, when it is at its most powerful. He is often depicted, as he is here, with a falcon’s head. Horus was another popular sky god, and the two became associated with each other over time. Thus Ra-Horakhty, ‘Ra who is Horus of the Two Horizons.’”
I nodded, looking up at the figure of a young man’s sun bronzed, muscular body, with gold glinting on the neck and wrists and sandal clad feet, as well as on the elaborate, jeweled overskirt he wore. I didn’t know how some ancient sculptor had managed to make the skin look smooth and touchable, and the rock cut underskirt appear as filmy and diaphanous as fine silk, but he had. Ra was the very image of an ancient king, even with the huge falcon’s head growing out of his shoulders.
Or maybe because of it.
In most of the portrayals I’d seen, the combo had looked like a guy wearing a bad Halloween mask. But not here. The artist had carefully shown the transition from skin to feathers, with the color starting well down his chest and shading darker as it flowed up the fine muscles of his torso, to the huge pectoral he wore.